VOORHEES, N.J. – Hockey line chemistry can be a funny thing.
One minute everything can be in sync and clicking on all cylinders. The next it can look disjointed and hesitant.
So something had to be adjusted to get the Flyers’ trio of Noah Cates-Tyson Foerster-Bobby Brink back on track.
The first month of the season, they couldn’t do anything wrong. Then Foerster suffered an injury, missed a handful of games, then returned to a unit that seemed to have a different feel.
The offensive numbers pretty much tell the story. Cates has one goal in his last 12 games, Foerster one in his last seven and Brink two in his last nine.
For Wednesday’s practice at the Flyers Training Center, coach Rick Tocchet did some experimenting, putting Cates and Foerster with Travis Konecny. Brink skated with Sean Couturier and Matvei Michkov.
Whether Tocchet plans to stick with those groups for Thursday night’s home game against the St. Louis Blues remains to be seen. But there’s a good chance.
Tocchet didn’t make excuses for the lack of production from the Cates line.
“I’ve used them against the best players of other teams quite a lot this year,” Tocchet said. “It’s hard … sometimes maybe I can help them a little bit, switch up with the hard matchups, give them a different look. You’re always going to go against the best players.”
Tocchet used Edmonton’s Connor McDavid and Winnipeg’s Mark Scheifele as examples of matchups.
“You can’t be sleeping against those guys,” Tocchet said. “Some other guys might not be on their game, you can get away with. So I give them (the Cates line) a lot of credit for hanging in there.”
That helps account for a stark difference in plus/minus numbers month to month. Brink was a plus-1 for October. He’s a minus-6 for November. Foerster was a plus-6 for October. In November he’s a minus-3. And Cates was a plus-2 for October and minus-1 for November.
Foerster’s injury threw things out of rhythm, limiting his skating as he recovered. A change of scenery might give the original linemates a breath of fresh air.
“You just want to give a little different look,” Tocchet said. “Adding a guy here or there might spice up a little chemistry with the other lines.”
Cates doesn’t mince words when talking about his line’s current status. Very few lines make it through a season intact. This one’s origin goes all the way back to last season.
“Whenever you’re in a slump, get to the net, keep it simple,” Cates said. “As a line, we know our standard and how good we can be. We don’t play the blame game or anything like that. We look at ourselves individually and say ‘what can we do more?’ That’s the best way to approach it.”
The old “gripping the stick too tightly” cliché might come into play, even though these guys have enough NHL games under their belts to know how to break out of it.
“I think that (stick tightly) is a real thing,” Cates said. “For me, it’s always been simple. Go to the net, get back to making plays there and keep it simple. That’s how you get your confidence back.”
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The Flyers held lengthy practices both Monday and Wednesday, sandwiched around an unexpected day off Tuesday. Tocchet believes these sessions provided some valuable coaching time.
“I think the themes of the practices this week were we were too passive, backing up,” Tocchet said. “Today we had a neutral zone drill which was probably our best practice with our ‘D’ basically breaking up plays.
“Lucky we had three or four days to work on this stuff, not on the fly. I would be shocked if we didn’t have a good game tomorrow (home game vs. St. Louis). I thought the guys bought in this week what we want from them.”
Source: Berkshire mont